


(in the dying world) it was set burning

by blackkat



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Creepy Abandoned Places: The Fic, Developing Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Friendship, Horror, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Horror, Psychometry, Suspense, atmospheric horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:34:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25648135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: A crash-landing on an unknown planet in Wild Space puts Quinlan, Rex, and several troopers in the middle of a dark world with far too many secrets, and strange forces that seem hellbent on making sure they don't escape alive.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex/Quinlan Vos
Comments: 75
Kudos: 424
Collections: Star Wars Alternate Universes





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *waves hand* If slow-build psychological horror isn't your thing, this is not the fic you're looking for. It's also not another WIP, you're definitely seeing things.

It’s usually the 327th Star Corps who comes to bail Quinlan out after a mission gone bad, but apparently all the people Quinlan pissed off this time rated him someone higher up the food chain than Aayla and her bruisers.

“General Vos, are you all right?” a clone with _jaig_ eyes on his helmet asks, shoving his way into the tiny room with a crunch of broken locks. He leaves it to swing closed behind him, and it takes effort for Quinlan not to twitch, not to lunge for it. He _knows_ that it’s not going to lock again, and that this captain definitely didn’t come alone even if it does, but—

Logic might not be the highest function operating in Quinlan's brain right now.

(Obi-Wan would say ever. Obi-Wan is an asshole who hides it behind a pretty smile, and Quinlan loves that about him.)

“I think I need to register a complaint with your general,” he rasps, throat dry.

The captain doesn’t even blink; he goes to one knee between Quinlan's thighs, reaching for the manacles glowing dull red in the dark room. “I'm sure General Skywalker will be thrilled to take it, sir,” he says dryly.

Quinlan doesn’t flinch back from the glancing brush of gauntlets against his fingers; he flinches back from the sudden impact of those gloves in a battle droid’s face, brief and vivid and shocking, a bare inch from his nose. Instantly, the clone jerks his hands away, and Quinlan takes a moment to get his breath back, eyes closed. He tightens his control as best he can, tries to marshal some level of mental peace, but—

It’s hard. Someone else was wearing these manacles before him. Someone else was in this cell before him. Neither of them suffered pleasant fates, and Quinlan's been riding the echoes for so long he feels like he’s about to go mad with them.

“Sorry, sir,” the clone says quietly. “Is it all right if I check your cuffs? We might have a skeleton key that works.”

“There's a main terminal that controls them,” Quinlan manages after a moment. “In the control center, or something. I've never seen these ones before, so I doubt you have the key.”

The captain nods curtly, then raises his arm and clicks his comm on. “Kix, I found the general. Cell block three. Tup, Hardcase, give him an escort. Jesse, Fives, find the control room and deactivate the general’s cuffs.”

Quinlan keeps his eyes closed, listening to the captain shift faintly. “You said Anakin's your general?” he asks, more to fill the silence than because he actually cares.

“Yes, sir.” There's a click, then a scuff, and the captain says, “Torrent Company, from the 501st Attack Battalion. I have water, if you want it.”

He does, but he also wants to not touch anything at all, ever again. Grimacing, Quinlan opens his eyes, assessing the battered canteen in front of his face. It’s probably seen a lot of use, he thinks, resigned. It looks like it has. But his throat is dry, and he hasn’t had anything to drink since the last time the bastards holding him tried repeatedly to drown him.

“Sure,” he says. “Thanks.”

The captain reaches up, carefully pressing the canteen to Quinlan's lips, and Quinlan ignores the flash of the captain’s mouth where his is, the scorched smell of a battlefield in the background, and swallows two large mouthfuls. When he turns his head away, the captain isn't quite fast enough to lift the canteen, and water splashes Quinlan's bare chest. He twitches despite himself, and the clone pulls back, capping the canteen hastily.

“Sorry, sir,” he says again. “General Kenobi sent us with some extra robes, but they're back on the shuttle.”

Quinlan's breath shakes on the exhale. Of kriffing _course_ Obi-Wan did, the kind bastard. They're probably his own robes, because he knows that after a bad mission Quinlan usually takes Aayla's, wraps himself in them and lets the familiarity settle him. He huffs out a bare laugh, and asks, “Does he have enough to spare, the way he always drops them everywhere?”

The clone clips his canteen to his belt again, then reaches up and pulls his helmet off, smiling a little. He’s blond underneath, too short a crew cut for it to be anything but natural, and he says, “That a habit of his? It’s driving Cody insane, requisitioning spares.”

“Always,” Quinlan says dryly, tipping his head back against the wall. He turns his question over for a moment, and then says, “Aayla's usually the one to come get me after some idiots mess up my extraction.”

“You mean after you get caught?” the captain asks, like a kneejerk response, then seems to realize what he said and flushes. “Sorry, sir, I mean—”

Quinlan laughs. It’s a little ragged, a little rough, but he means it, and it feels like a knot easing in his chest. “Yeah,” he agrees, grinning at the captain. “But my way makes me sound more badass.”

“If you end up in cuffs, I think that means coolness stops mattering,” the clone says dryly. “For the record.”

It’s nice to meet a clone willing to backtalk a Jedi. Quinlan would have a hell of a lot less of a problem with Bly if he didn’t follow Aayla around with that besotted puppy expression all the time. Though, granted, the besotted part is probably his big problem there. Not that Aayla has noticed yet.

“Well, I tried,” Quinlan says with a shrug. Takes a breath and asks, “She’s all right?”

“General Secura?” The captain hesitates, and that’s answer enough. Quinlan curses, squeezing his eyes shut, and he _knows_ not to fall into the trap of _if I was there she’d be safe_ , but—

It’s hard to remember sometimes. Harder right now than most times, even.

“General Koth is on his way to reinforce her,” the captain says quietly. “We lost communication with the 327th less then twelve hours ago, and he should be there soon.”

Eeth is good, as backup. Quinlan would be better. Except he wouldn’t, because his skills are more suited to a spy than a frontline soldier, and he’s more valuable where he is, stealing information right from underneath the CIS’s nose. Quinlan breathes in, breathes out, and nods.

“Good,” he says, opening his eyes, and gives the clone a grin. “Given the size of the crush her commander’s got on her, he’ll keep her safe.”

The captain snorts, clearly amused. “Usually it’s General Secura keeping Bly safe,” he says. “And all the rest of her men. Which doesn’t help the crush. She’s good at it.”

“Yeah,” Quinlan says quietly, because Aayla got shoved into command of one of the most dangerous, elite forces in the GAR; he can be proud of her for that, even if he worries. “She is.”

There's a pause, like the captain is looking for something to say, and then he asks carefully, “Was your mission successful, sir?”

Quinlan tips his head back against the stone, smiling humorlessly. “Well, none of these bastards realized I was a Jedi before you guys hit them. You keeping the captives penned up anywhere they might see you haul me out?”

One dark brow rises, and the captain looks thoughtful. “You want to keep your cover even though they tortured you?” he asks.

Quinlan tips one shoulder in a shrug. “This isn't going to be my last undercover mission, and half of these scumbags will make it out of Republic custody before they ever make it to trial. I might as well hedge my bets.”

“Better to be a spy the GAR also wanted than a spy _for_ the GAR,” the captain says, and gives him a crooked smirk. “I think I can manage that. As long as you don’t mind some manhandling, General.”

Quinlan minds it a hell of a lot right now, but—well. Sacrifices for the good of the Republic and all that bantha shit. He can suck it up and deal with it. “I—can it be you?” He’s already gotten flashes from the captain, after all; it’s less of a pain to just stay in his head than to adjust to new people.

“Of course, sir.” It’s mildly comforting that the answer is perfunctory, simple, rather than kind, and Quinlan tries not to be grateful for it.

“Thanks,” Quinlan says, tries his best to make it offhand. “What do I call you?”

“Rex, sir.” Rex rises to his feet, just as Quinlan catches the sound of steps in the hall, loud and obvious. He shoves the door open, then leans out, and says with a touch of relief, “Kix, over here.”

Quinlan grimaces, thumping his head lightly against the wall once, and tells himself again to suck it up. The Jedi Healers know about his abilities, and they’re always careful, but—this is a warzone. There's no time to make allowances just because Quinlan doesn’t want to be uncomfortable. Last time she saved him, Aayla yelled at him about the clones not being exposed to Kiffar before, about being kind or at least not an asshole when they didn’t _know_ , and—

Well. Quinlan's _trying_. It’s just hard sometimes. Getting repeatedly punched in the face by images of war and suffering is something that happens a lot, these days, but—the clones _all_ bleed those visions. Even brushing armor accidentally is enough to dump a whole heap of nastiness over Quinlan's head, and he can deal with pain, he can take the trauma and the grief and the loss, but—

He’s getting tired. This war is making him tired. He’s a Jedi, and he’ll always do his duty, but.

Battlefield medics are their own kind of torture, honestly.

Quick, deft, a clone in medic-marked armor slips through the half-open door, takes one look at Quinlan, and sucks in a breath. “General!” he says, worried, and drops to his knees, hauling his pack off. “Captain, the cuffs—”

“Jesse and Fives are working on getting them off,” Rex says, and nods to the two troopers in the doorway, then crouches down on Quinlan's far side. His gaze lingers on Quinlan for a moment, and then he glances at Kix and says, “If there’s anything that I can do instead of you, let me.”

Quinlan doesn’t let himself react, but—those words turn hard in his chest, and he wants to close his eyes, sink into the wash of relief. Not Aayla here saving him, but—not a bad substitute, apparently.

Kix gives Rex a quizzical look, but nods. “All right,” he says, and pulls out his scanner, sweeping it up and down Quinlan's torso. Through his visor, Quinlan can see his expression tighten, and the frown that slides across his face. “You have fractured ribs, sir, and internal bruising, and there's water in your lungs. The nearest facility with a bacta tank—”

Quinlan shakes his head. “Just do what you can with the basics. I need to report to the Council as soon as possible.”

Kix's sigh is soft and resigned, but he says, “Yes, sir,” and shoves a hypo at Rex. “In the side of his neck, Captain.”

It’s the same glove that brushed Quinlan's hand before, but there’s no droid-punching this time. A handprint, smearing blue across white armor on a dark moon, and Quinlan can brace through it more easily than the last as he holds still, lets the hypo be tapped hard against the side of his throat. Then Rex is withdrawing again, and Quinlan closes his eyes, breathes through his nose, and finds that it comes easier. He lets out a sound of relief, and in the same moment, his cuffs beep loudly, then click open.

“Easy,” Kix says quickly, reaching out in an automatic movement like he’s going to catch Quinlan's arms. “Your muscles—”

Quinlan gives him a sharp-edged smirk, slowly and painfully easing his arms down. “Believe me, trooper, I've been chained up before. I know how it goes.”

“You're a Jedi, sir,” Kix says, a little wry. “Forgive me if I'm skeptical.”

Quinlan snorts, leaning forward with a groan to stretch out his back. “Now that sounds like someone who’s been working with Obi-Wan for way too long,” he says, and Kix's sigh of aggravated agreement makes him laugh.

“Careful of your ribs, sir,” Kix tells him, and turns to his kit again, pulling out a smaller case. “One of the cracks looks like it’s nearly a full break, so I need to fix it before you move.”

Quinlan's had enough broken ribs and punctured lungs to know better than to argue. He pulls a face, but straightens up, carefully lifting his arm, and braces himself.

“Kix—” Rex starts, wary.

“With all due respect, Captain, I'm not trusting you with a bone mender.”

Deep indignation flickers across Rex's face, and Quinlan snorts. “Harsh,” he says, grinning, and Rex rolls his eyes.

“He tried to walk off a blaster wound,” Kix says, longsuffering. “The captain has _definitely_ been working with General Kenobi for too long.”

Quinlan, who’s had firsthand experience with Obi-Wan “it’s only a scratch” Kenobi, makes a sound of pained sympathy. “Obi-Wan was like that when we were kids, too,” he says. “He got clubbed over the head by a Besalisk once and insisted he was fine right up until he tripped over his own feet and passed out dramatically.”

Kix winces. “And made his concussion worse when he hit the ground, right?”

“Oh no,” Quinlan says, smirking. “I caught him in my arms. Like a delicate little princess.”

Kix laughs, and Quinlan can see that Rex is trying very, very hard to keep a straight face. “Good,” Kix says, and activates the bone mender. “General Kenobi needs someone to pick him up off the ground once in a while.”

“You were in the Temple at the same time, sir?” Rex asks curiously.

Quinlan's honestly glad for the distraction as the bone mender settles against his skin. As it does, there's another figure in the cell with them, blood staining the ground beneath him, one leg shattered. He’s groaning in pain, clawing at the dirt as Kix bends over him, and Quinlan grits his teeth and deliberately looks at Rex instead of the trooper.

“Yeah,” he says, maybe a little too rough, but—at least it’s a word. He can manage words. “My Master brought me to the Temple when I was already a padawan, and Obi-Wan was just starting his training. Our Masters were friends, so we ended up training together.”

“Oh,” Rex says, surprised. “But don’t all initiates have to go into the crèche? General Skywalker was saying…” He trails off, looking wary.

Quinlan snorts, then winces as Kix's gloves brush his side. There's no flash of death or ruin, though, the way he’s expecting; instead, the wounded trooper is replaced by a sleeping one, Kix sitting beside him and holding his hand, and—it doesn’t hurt. Quinlan closes his eyes for a moment, relieved, and then says, “Anakin still has his head stuck up his ass about that. But our situations were a little different. Tholme had already been training me for years when he brought me to the Temple, and I was still younger than Anakin.”

“General Skywalker just…gets offended that the Council didn’t want to train him,” Rex says carefully.

Quinlan rolls his eyes. “He wouldn’t face his emotions, and that’s half of being a Jedi. You have to at least acknowledge what you're feeling so that things don’t build up until you're tearing whole buildings apart with your mind. Anakin's just a punk who likes to hold grudges.”

“Oh.” Rex glances at Kix, who’s looking back, and Quinlan wonders just what stories Anakin's been telling his troopers. Tales of woe, probably, and justifications for why he defies the Council, or at least is reckless with their orders. Quinlan's heard it before. He likes Anakin, but the kid can be simultaneously the most hidebound annoying brat and the most reckless idiot alive, and it’s entertaining that _Obi-Wan_ , of all people, ended up with him.

“There,” Kix says softly, lifting the mender away from Quinlan's skin and sitting back. “Don’t move them too much for the next few hours, but you should be fine, General. How are you breathing?”

“Better,” Quinlan says honestly. When Kix gives him a wary look, he snorts and raises his hands. “It’s the truth, I promise. My Master is a Healer, I know better than to lie to people like you.”

“People like me?” Kix asks, sounding like he’s not sure he should be offended.

“Yeah,” Quinlan says with a lazy grin. “The bloodsucking, hypo-stabbing type.”

Rex presses his knuckles against his mouth, hiding his laughter, and it’s very obvious the two unnamed troopers in the doorway are muffling laughter as well.

“Don’t smirk at me, Captain,” Kix says, rolling his eyes, though Quinlan can feel the flicker of his amusement. “At least he knows better.” He looks at Quinlan for a moment, then fishes out his scanner again, and checks it carefully. “Everything else I think I can treat with bacta, but I’ll check again once we’re back on the ship. Think you can walk, sir?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.” Quinlan carefully pushes to his feet, trying not to touch anything he hasn’t already, and ignores the way Rex immediately steps close like he’s planning to catch him. “Anakin?”

“The general is leading the assault on the main section of the station,” Rex says. “Along with the commander. Torrent was ordered to get you to safety, and we have a ship standing by to take us back to the _Resolute_.”

Of course that’s how Anakin would do it. Quinlan huffs, but nods, and looks at Rex. “Want me to put the cuffs back on?”

“Sir?” Kix asks in alarm, coming to his feet.

“Just a ruse to keep his cover,” Rex says soothingly, and pulls a pair of binders from his belt. “If you’ll let me, sir?”

“You're not getting my hands behind me,” Quinlan warns with mostly good humor, but he offers his wrists, bracing himself. The first brush of the binder sliding over his skin hits with a _snarl_ , and it takes effort not to twitch away from a clone who’s suddenly beside him, fighting with Rex and Cody as they cuff his hands behind him and haul him up.

“You couldn't be a greater disappointment. How could you do this to your brothers?” Anakin says, taking a step closer, and the anger around him sets Quinlan's teeth on edge.

The clone in the cuffs laughs bitterly. “Only a Jedi would ask that. It's the Jedi who keep my brothers enslaved! We do your bidding, we serve at your whim. I just wanted something more.”

Shit, Quinlan thinks, and closes his eyes, shaking the vision off. Breathes through the clone’s fury and hatred, and asks, “How’s Obi-Wan?”

“Good, sir,” Rex says, overlapping with his double’s fading words until Quinlan thankfully can't hear them. “He’s negotiating with one of the systems near here for support, and Cody says the talks are going well.”

At least that’s one friend who’s out of the direct line of fire, Quinlan thinks ruefully. Though, knowing Obi-Wan, he’ll trip into his own mess of trouble sooner rather than later. “And Cody? How’s my favorite commander doing these days?”

Rex blinks at him for a moment, clearly caught off guard. “You know Cody?” he asks, bewildered. “You _like_ Cody?”

Quinlan laughs. “I like anybody who thinks spin-kicking a droid is the best way to put them down,” he says. “Yeah, I know Cody.”

Rex pulls a face, but he picks up his helmet and hooks it to his belt, then closes a hand around Quinlan's arm, carefully guiding him towards the door. “Cody doesn’t need the encouragement, sir. He’s fine, but General Kenobi is going to give him grey hairs one of these days.”

“Obi-Wan does that to people,” Quinlan says, amused, and nods to the troopers in the doorway. “Gentlemen.”

“Tup, Hardcase,” Rex says, and tips his head. “Fall in behind us, blasters up. Pretend like the general’s a dangerous fugitive.”

“Sir?” the trooper with a teardrop on his helmet asks, alarmed, and takes a step back. “A _fugitive_?”

“You want us to threaten the _general_?” the other asks, and glances from Rex to Quinlan and then to Kix. It’s a little amusing; Quinlan assumes they usually give Anakin and Obi-Wan that kind of look. The _our parents are telling us conflicting things and I don’t know who to listen to_ type of expression.

“Threaten away,” he says, giving them a grin. “Who’s Hardcase and who’s Tup?”

“Uh, I'm Tup?” the one with the teardrop says carefully, raising a hand. Probably not far off of being a shiny, Quinlan thinks.

“Hardcase,” the other says, tapping the parallel lines framing his chestplate. “How threatening do you want us to be, sir?”

“Go wild,” Quinlan tells him. “Only Rex touches me, though.”

“This seems like a bad idea,” Kix says quietly, but he hauls his pack back on and picks up his blaster.

“I've had worse,” Quinlan says easily, and Kix makes a half-strangled sound of despair that makes him laugh.

Rex snorts, too, his fingers loose around Quinlan's bicep. “They're keeping captives in the hangar, one level down. Shouldn’t be too long of a walk, sir.”

“As long as it’s a walk out of here, I don’t care if we have to haul ourselves all the way to the other side of the station,” Quinlan says, and as Rex leads him into the hall, he casts one look back at the cell, thinks about the people who occupied it before him, and then determinedly turns his eyes forward again. There's no use dwelling when they're far beyond his ability to help.

“That would be right through some of General Skywalker's more creative maneuvers, so you’ll excuse us for sticking to this floor,” Rex says, dry. “Kix, want to get the lift?”

“Yes, sir.” Kix slips past him, heading for the darkened cargo lift at a trot. Quinlan eyes it, then the cells around them, and tries to think how long it’s been since he heard other people around him, or sensed their minds. A week at least, probably. Time has been fuzzy, the last couple of days.

“No other prisoners?” he asks quietly.

“Not on this side of the station,” Rex answers. “Commander Tano said her squad found more on the other side, but it looks like you rated private accommodations, sir.”

“Lucky me,” Quinlan drawls, and ducks his head a little to miss the blasted-open grating covering the lift. The whole space station echoes with misery, and it’s particularly concentrated here, enough so to make his skin prickle. As the lift starts to move, he takes a breath, rolls his shoulders, and says, “I'm going to fight back.”

Rex's smile is sharp. “I figured as much, sir. Better make a good show of it.”

Adding an arrest and interrogation to this identity will be a hell of a lot easier than coming up with a whole new identity, Quinlan knows. It’s worth the manhandling. He casts Rex a smirk in return, then takes a half-step closer to him as the lift jars to a stop. Instantly, Rex's grip tightens, and as the doors slide open he hauls Quinlan forward with an entirely convincing snarl.

“Don’t shoot him,” he orders, pitched to carry, and hauls Quinlan back as Quinlan lunges to the side. “General wants him in one piece. Come on, scumbag.”

“Like hell I'm going with you,” Quinlan retorts, and throws himself sideways into Rex. Gets a flicker-flash of vision, a full-body hit of the sound of a deafening explosion as stone and dirt pelts them, only for Rex to practically throw him in front of him with a hard shove, wrapping an arm around Quinlan's lower back and all but picking him up off his feet as he’s dragged forward.

Quinlan hisses, and not entirely from the image of the armor somewhere dark, humid, and echoing with blaster-fire. He always forgets that the clones are _engineered_ , created to be super-soldiers at the very peak of Human performance. Rex is _strong_ , and it’s kind of hot.

“Let me _go_ ,” he snarls, trying to wrestle his way free, but Rex's hold doesn’t budge as he hauls Quinlan up the ramp of the shuttle.

“I don’t think so,” Rex retorts, and calls, “Fives, take command. I'm getting this one back to the _Resolute._ Kix, with him.”

An ARC trooper with blue and red on his helmet salutes, and Hardcase and Tup follow Rex up the ramp as Kix comes to a halt, looking unhappy. He doesn’t protest, though, and Tup quickly keys the ramp shut, then takes two steps back into the ship and quickly lowers his blaster.

“You wanted us on board, right, sir?” he asks.

“Yes, Tup,” Rex says, faintly amused. “Hardcase, get us in the air. The general has a report to deliver, and we don’t want to make him late.”

“Yes, sir,” Hardcase says, sounding much more cheerful, and heads for the front of the ship at a quick pace. “Never flown this close to Wild Space, so it should be fun. There's a whole asteroid field out there that’s never been mapped.”

“Keep us _out_ of the asteroid field,” Rex says, a little weary, and quickly deactivates the binders. “Sorry, sir. You all right?”

“Never better,” Quinlan says, and takes two steps, then slumps down on one of the benches along the wall, tipping his head back. gets a flash of Obi-Wan in the same spot, legs stretched out in front of him, hands folded over his stomach, and smiles faintly.

“Here, sir,” Rex says quietly, just as the engines rumble to life. When Quinlan opens his eyes, Rex is holding out a pile of brown cloth, neatly folded. “General Kenobi made it very clear we needed to give you this as soon as we got you back to the ship.”

Obi-Wan is a bastard, but he’s _Quinlan's_ bastard, and Quinlan's best friend. He lets out a breath, reaching out for the robes, and wraps his hands in them as he takes them. They're—worn. Obi-Wan’s favorite, probably, or the ones he keeps for quiet moments. All Quinlan can see as he runs his fingers over them is Obi-Wan reading, or Obi-Wan sipping tea in a quiet corner, or Obi-Wan indulging his secret sweet tooth, powdered sugar dusting his fingers and the hems of his sleeves.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly, and wraps them around himself, pulling the hood up and wrapping the wide sleeves around his hands. It feels a little like curling up with Obi-Wan, tucked against his side as he reads or talks, and Quinlan closes his eyes, hunkering down into the fabric as best he can. They're roomier than Aayla's robes, at least, even if they're still a little small; he always ends up looking ridiculous when she gives him hers.

“Want anything else, General?” Rex asks after a moment. “We’ve got rations and water, if you want.”

“This is good, but thanks.” Quinlan cracks an eye, watching Rex take a seat on the bench a meter away, and says, “Thanks for the rescue, Captain.”

“It’s our pleasure, sir.” Rex glances at him, then towards the viewscreen, and Quinlan can feel that there's something he wants to ask—

“Oh, _kriff_ ,” says Hardcase.

Instantly Rex is on his feet again, headed for the front. “Report,” he orders, even as Tup catches one of the handholds next to Quinlan with both hands.

“Fighters inbound,” Hardcase says. “Five of ‘em, sir, and they’ve got us in their sights.”

“Shake them,” Rex orders. “I don’t care what you have to do, but get them off our tail.” There's the click of a comm, and he says, “Shadow Squadron, do you copy? We’ve got enemies inbound and they're trying to shoot us out of the sky over here. Help would be appreciated.”

“Rex?” Anakin's voice, and Quinlan reaches out, tries to feel where he is and gets a vague impression of chaos. Which probably shouldn’t be surprising. “What’s happening?”

“We’re being attacked, sir,” Rex repeats, with more patience than Quinlan would bother with. “Five fighters, looks like they're from the station.”

“They slipped past us!” Ahsoka says, angry, and there's the sound of an explosion in the background. “We couldn’t stop them before they deployed. Seven of them, I think.”

“Seven,” Rex echoes, and his voice shades towards alarm as he says, “Hardcase, it’s a trap, they're—”

Bantha shit, Quinlan thinks, and pushes to his feet even as the ship lurches. There's a _wrench_ , a sound of impact, and Hardcase curses loudly. Tup lunges, catching Quinlan's elbow before he can overbalance, and Quinlan shoves through the fire of a blaster somewhere hot and dry and heads for the front, grabbing the back of the seat and ignoring the feeling of Cody's hair brushing his knuckles as the commander turns his head to say something to Obi-Wan.

“Karking _hell_ ,” Hardcase says, and sends them into a dive, twisting through the shots as two of the fighters follow. “Sir, we don’t have _nearly_ enough guns for this kind of thing. I can't shoot all of them without putting us right in the line of fire.”

“Shadow Squadron’s currently engaged,” Rex says grimly. “Broadside is sending men as soon as he can, but—”

Another glancing hit makes the whole shuttle shudder, and Quinlan catches Rex, then says, “Lose them in the asteroid field.”

“Kriff,” Rex mutters. “Can you do it, Hardcase?”

“No idea, sir,” Hardcase says, “but that’s never stopped me from trying.”

Quinlan laughs despite himself, leaning forward. “There,” he says, pointing towards the first rock in the field. “Aim for that one. It’s not wide. We should make it through easily.”

“And right into Wild Space,” Rex says grimly.

“Respectfully, sir, it’s a hell of a lot better than getting shot,” is Hardcase’s opinion, and he aims them for the gap. Quinlan digs his fingers into the seat, trying to feel for the best option even as they spin to miss a shot, and—

“Hard left,” he says, and Hardcase doesn’t even hesitate to wrench the yoke, spiraling them right past a huge asteroid as it bears down on them. He accelerates, and one of the fighters is just a moment too slow. The asteroid clips it, and it spins out, slamming into another rock in an explosion of metal and flame that’s instantly snuffed out. Hardcase whoops, then pulls them straight, arrowing for the other side of the field.

“Thanks, sir!” he crows, and Quinlan snorts, reaching out—

The asteroids spin apart like a hand just pushed them aside, careening off into space, and it’s not an asteroid field at all, it’s a wall of darkness, it’s a _shroud_ —

They hit it full-on, punch through, and Quinlan feels it like fingers, like _hands_. They grab at him, pulling in every direction, and there are voices _screaming_ , terror and pain and fury ringing in his mind. He recoils with a cry, hands going to his ears like that will do anything to muffle the sound, and hears Hardcase’s shout, Tup's sound of fear as the ship goes careening wildly out of control.

Feels, in that last moment, Rex's body hit his, an arm around his shoulders, a hand cradling his head, and then they're slamming into something hard, the dark is falling like a wave breaking over them, and there's nothing left at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Just _once_ Rex wants a mission to go off exactly as planned.

“Hardcase!” he calls, wrestling his way out from underneath a crate that split open to spill fuel packs everywhere. “ _Hardcase_!”

There's a wheeze from the crumpled front of the ship, a clatter. Hardcase hauls himself up and out of the twisted wreck of the pilot’s chair, then collapses, coughing. “Here, sir,” he wheezes, and Rex breathes a curse, staggering across the sharply slanted deck to reach him. When Rex hauls him up, his armor is scorched in a jagged line down the chest, but he finds his feet, manages to walk well enough as they climb up the decking and out the jagged hole torn in the ship’s side.

“Kriff,” Hardcase says, breathless, and pauses at the top, surveying the wreck with dismay. “Matchstick’s never gonna let me fly a ship again.”

Rex can't help the sound of amusement that’s pulled from him, and he clasps Hardcase’s shoulder tightly, then asks, “Think you can slide down? I need to find Tup and the general.”

“Should’ve found the general first,” is Hardcase’s opinion, but he pulls away, only winces a little when he crouches down to grab the edge. “Anything out here wants to eat us, I’d say it should meet a lightsaber.”

Hopefully the general _has_ his lightsaber; Rex put it in the pocket of General Kenobi's robe, but he didn’t actually get a chance to _tell_ Vos that. “You were up front,” he says instead of that, though. “When we hit—”

Hardcase glances up, and Rex can only just catch his smile before he leaps down from the edge of the hole, kicks off the hull, and slides the rest of the way to the ground. “I'm fine, Captain,” he says. “And look, I made us an exit!”

“I think that was the mountain,” Rex says dryly, but he turns and slides back down into the ship. Tup was close to the rear, which is still mostly intact, and Vos—

Rex grabbed him, remembers protecting his head and bracing him for the first lurching hit as they dropped into atmosphere, but now he can't see him. He can barely see anything; it’s oppressively dark, not in the way of simple night but like a moonless night with heavy fog far away from any cities. The gloom feels thick, hard to breathe through, and Rex's helmet lights fade unnervingly less than a foot into the dark.

“General?” he calls, shoving aside the tumbled crates and almost tripping over a bench that was torn free from the wall. “General? Tup?”

From the far end of the ship, there's a groan, a clatter. Tup sits up, shoving a section of paneling off of him, and curls forward over his knees, hauling his helmet off with a pained sound. Instantly, Rex abandons his attempt to pick through the debris, vaulting a twisted piece of metal and dropping to one knee at Tup's side.

“Tup?” he asks. “You in one piece?”

“Maybe,” Tup says, muffled. His nose is bleeding, and he wipes it away, then glances up at Rex. “Where’s the general?”

“I don’t see him,” Rex says grimly, and pushes to his feet, offering Tup a hand. Tup takes it, staggering a step as he makes it upright, and then takes a step past Rex towards the front.

“He was—I saw him,” Tup says, and swallows. “Right before we hit the mountain. But he was unconscious, and he wasn’t moving.”

He’d screamed. Rex remembers that much. Whatever they hit that felt like tearing through black gauze, it made Vos scream like Rex has never heard a Jedi scream, and he tightens his jaw, then tips his head.

“Help me clear this away,” he says. “If he’s unconscious, he might have been buried.”

Tup flicks a glance at the hole in the side, but moves to help Rex anyway, and Rex is grateful. He’s trying not to think about what it would mean, if Vos got dragged out of the ship as they his atmosphere. Rex didn’t see it happen, but—there was a lot going on, and he was trying not to lose sight of either of his men.

“Hardcase?” Tup asks quietly, as he helps Rex clear away the last of the debris. There's no sign of the general underneath them, no shred of brown robes or dropped lightsaber, but—Rex has been conscious the whole time since they hit. He didn’t see anyone moving except Hardcase and Tup.

“Kriff,” he mutters, sinking back on his heels. Casts another look around the ship, but—it’s barely bigger than a shuttle, and there wasn’t exactly a lot of cargo. The front is clear, and the tail is clear, and Rex can't see any sign of Vos near them, but that leaves only the worst options.

“Captain?” Tup asks quietly, nervously. Rex can hear the waver in his voice, and has to close his eyes and remind himself that Tup only transferred to Torrent two weeks ago. Most of that time has been spent traveling, too, and he wasn’t in the 501st all that much longer before he got shunted over to fill space. Good test scores, good performance record, but—he painted his armor less than three weeks ago. He might as well still be a shiny.

“Hardcase is outside,” Rex says, and rises. “Come on, we need to scout the forest. If the general got thrown free, we should be able to find him.”

Assuming, of course, that there's anything left of him to find. Rex _knows_ what Jedi can survive, but Vos was unconscious when they hit, and without the Force, he’s just a Kiffar, barely more durable than a Human. Depending on where he was when he got thrown from the ship, they might be looking at recovering a corpse rather than a general.

Rex's first thought _should_ be for the Republic, for the impact of losing Vos’s intelligence on the way the criminal underworld is assisting the Confederacy in their war efforts. But—

He swallows, hands curling into fists. Breathes in, then out, and can't help but think of Vos— _Quinlan_ —chained up in the cell, clearly tortured, flinching from Rex's touch but still smiling. Still joking and teasing and laughing, focused on doing his duty even over his own health. A Jedi to the core, despite the fact that he spends most of his time undercover. General Kenobi’s friend, from what Rex could tell, and a good friend at that—Rex saw the way Quinlan’s expression softened when presented with Kenobi’s spare robes, and heard the fondness in his voice when he joked about Kenobi losing them since childhood.

If Rex has to be the one to tell Kenobi that they lost Quinlan, lost him after rescuing him and couldn’t even manage to protect him on the short flight from the station to the _Resolute_ , it’s—

Well. It’s not going to kill him. But it will hurt like hell.

The intelligence is a loss, of course. It always is. But another Jedi gone, and this one under Rex's care, isn't something he wants to accept.

“Maybe he’s already making his way back to us,” Tup says hopefully, and offers Rex a hand as he scales the slanted floor. Rex takes it gladly, letting Tup haul him to the top, and then leaps down, landing next to Hardcase in a crouch.

“Maybe,” Rex says, and as Tup scrambles down as well, he scans the trees around them. they're nothing but shadows in the gloom, strange, half-recognizable shapes that tangle and loom, branches reaching skyward. The trunks seem massive, but Rex can't tell whether that’s true or if it’s just an illusion brough on by shadows and darkness. Either way the lack of visibility makes the back of his neck prickle with gooseflesh, and he touches his pistols to remind himself they're still there and asks Hardcase, “Any sign of General Vos?”

“He’s not on board?” Hardcase asks, alarmed, which is answer enough. When Rex shakes his head, Hardcase mutters a curse and says, “If anything’s moving out here, Captain, I haven’t so much as caught a hint of it, and I've been watching. Place is creepy.”

“It’s really dark,” Tup says, which is an understatement. His grip on his blaster is tight, and his helmet turns quickly, scanning the trees.

“Might be morning soon,” Rex says, which is about all the hope he can offer, but—

They hit a wall of darkness, before they crashed. Rex caught one clear look at it as they punched through, and there were no stars visible, no sun, no moons. Just blackness, and one darker shadow against all the rest that turned out to be a planet. There's enough diffuse light right now that there has to be _some_ source beyond the darkness, but Rex has no idea what it is.

Nothing on the other side of the asteroid field they slipped into has ever been mapped, but—someone will find them. The planet’s pretty damn obvious, and the only place they reasonably could have crashed.

“Come on,” Rex says, and jerks his head towards the wide swath of downed trees and torn earth that marks where the ship hit. “Fan out and let’s look for the general, but stay within range of each other’s voices. I don’t want the wildlife getting any ideas.”

“Bet there are some big critters down here, given the size of the trees,” Hardcase says, and Tup makes a soft, resigned sound, lifts his blaster, and slides to the right, taking the edge of the treeline. Hardcase veers left, vanishing into the gloom after a handful of paces, and Rex takes the path of destruction, picking his way through the fallen trees and scorched earth.

“Do you know where we are, Captain?” Tup calls from the darkness. Rex can't even see his helmet lights through the trunks, but he can hear him, and that’s at least a little bit of relief.

“Wild Space,” Rex says. “None of it’s mapped. I doubt anyone in the Republic technically knows where we are.”

“That’s comforting, sir,” Hardcase says, and Rex can hear the grimace in his voice. “Means they’ll have a hell of a time finding us, yeah?”

Rex snorts. “Only one planet we could have hit,” he says. “Doubt it’ll be that hard to figure it out.” A patch of earth slips under his feet, loose and soft, and he stumbles, then catches his balance on a trunk and glances back.

Sees, in the dull glow of the lights, the curve of a dark-skinned wrist and arm just protruding from the earth.

Rex's breath hitches hard and sharp in his throat, locks his voice away. Instantly, desperately, he throws himself to the ground, shoving his hands into the soft earth, and flings it away in messy, hurried handfuls. Grabs for the wrist, the curve of an arm, and says loudly, “ _General_ —”

His gauntlet closes around something hard and cold, and a sharp tug doesn’t even budge the thing.

Rex recoils with a jerk, a sharp sound jarred from his throat, and then freezes. His heart is pounding in his throat, rabbit-quick, and there's a tremor of alarm still running through his limbs, but—

Logic. He grabs for logic, closing his eyes, and tries to marshal himself even as running steps sound.

“Captain?” Hardcase demands, and in the same moment Tup’s hand lands on Rex's shoulder, tugs. “Captain, is it—”

“Root,” Rex manages, and it should feel stupid. It was a rookie mistake, seeing something in the dirt and panicking. But—

But there's a prickle running down his whole spine now, that alarm settling heavy and cold in his veins as he tries to breathe. He’s thought Quinlan was buried in the trench the ship carved, that he was about to haul a corpse out of the ground, and that root looked _exactly_ like a bent and half-buried arm flung free of the soil.

“Just a root,” he says, and tries to make it sound convincing as he turns to look again. With the added light of Hardcase and Tup's helmets, he can see it’s just a skinned taproot, bent in precisely the right spot to look like a Human limb.

Just a mistake. A trick of the light and the shadows, and Rex wanting to find something.

“Sorry,” he manages, and forces himself back to his feet. “False alarm.”

“Least we’ve gotten that out of the way now,” Hardcase says, trying for cheerful. “General Vos getting buried alive would be a hell of a thing, though. Can't imagine he’d be able to manage it without help.”

Tup grimaces, turning to look away from the root. “It really does look like an arm,” he says, and then, “Do you want to take a minute, Captain?”

“No,” Rex says firmly. “If the general’s hurt, he’ll need bacta. We have to find him.”

Or his body. But either way, they need to know what’s happened to Quinlan. Even if it’s just for now, he’s their Jedi, and that means a hell of a lot to a clone.

“Yes sir. Back to the trees and the wildlife it is,” Hardcase says, more or less cheerfully. He turns and clumps away through the downed boughs, and Tup hesitates for one moment more and then mirrors him, casting a single glance back at Rex before he goes.

Rex lets them both fan out, still staring down at the root. Then, determinedly, he takes a breath, forces his feet to move, and keeps walking.

It’s hard going. Harder than it is among the trees, probably—the ground here is all rents and deep pits, scattered with fallen branches that crack and groan under Rex's boots. He has to climb over trunks scored and scraped by the ship’s headlong tumble across the ground, and the land here rises towards the mountain they scraped, a sharp incline that makes the footing more treacherous. Rocks just from the earth, slip under Rex's feet and force him to pick his way around them, so it’s slow as well as difficult. Rex can hear Tup and Hardcase getting further ahead, their voices more distant but still clear as they call regular check-ins that Rex keeps careful track of.

The gloom isn't getting any lighter, and Rex has a sinking suspicion, bone-deep and pulled from his lizard brain, that it’s not going to any time soon.

“—just think it’s weird, is all,” Hardcase is saying when Rex makes it over a particularly tangled pile of fallen trunks.

“Maybe they're all hiding?” Tup offers. “Because of the crash.”

“I guess.” Hardcase doesn’t sound overly impressed by that theory, but he doesn’t argue. “Hell of a crash, though. Kind of expected the whole ship to go up once we hit that peak. Our engine’s probably somewhere up here waiting for us.”

Not a repairable thing, Rex thinks with a grimace, and trips as a loose rock skids under his boot. He only just manages to catch himself on a downed trunk before he hits the ground, and curses, pushing himself up carefully. When he glances up ahead of them, he can just make out the shape of the looming mountain in the gloom, a hazy silhouette against a sky two shades lighter. The crash mark probably ends soon, at least down here; they didn’t tumble that far once they hit the ground, but they skipped down the mountain a short ways after it tore the ship open. If Quinlan got flung free, the odds are it happened up there.

It’s not a hike Rex is looking forward to, especially in the dark. With a faint sigh, he reaches up to tap his helmet lights in the hope that that will somehow magically convince them to be brighter, and—

His palm is bright, dripping red.

Rex freezes, stone-still and hardly even breathing. Doesn’t yell, doesn’t recoil, but— _hell_ does he have the urge to do both at the same time. He stares, mind racing as the droplets fall from his glove, and then turns, taking a step backwards and sweeping a look over whatever could be the source. The only thing he’s touched is the log he caught himself on, and he leans close to sweep it with his lights, following a long gash down. There’s sap dripping from it, thin and liquid, and when Rex smears his fingers through it and raises them to the light, they come away crimson.

“Karking hell,” Rex mutters, letting out a shuddering breath, and pitches his voice to carry. “Looks like the trees are bleeding.”

“ _What_?” Tup says, alarmed.

“The sap,” Rex clarifies, shaking his gauntlet to get the worst of the drips off. “It’s bright red. Looks like blood.”

There's a pause, then a curse. Hardcase stomps his feet a few times, and says, “Bantha shit. I look like I’ve been playing in blood puddles.”

That’s a charming image. Rex grimaces, but picks up his pace again, and says, “If the general wasn’t hurt too badly, he might be looking for us. Keep an eye out.”

“Not like we could see much of anything in this,” Tup says grimly, and pauses. “There are drips on the standing trees, too.”

Great, Rex thinks. Trees dripping blood, roots that look like arms, darkness that feels like a blindfold across their faces. This is a kriffing charming place. He pulls a face, vaulting over the last of the fallen trunks and out of the scar from their crash. It’s even darker beneath the trees, and there's something odd, something off. It itches at him, makes him scan the shadows a little more carefully than he otherwise might, but he can't quite put his finger on what it is.

“Hell of a place,” Hardcase says, rueful. “Hey, think Dogma will have decided what to paint on his armor by the time we’re back?”

“Maybe.” Tup doesn’t sound convinced. “He was talking abut getting a tattoo.” There's a pause, and then he says, “Hardcase, did you see what happened to the fighters chasing us?”

Rex blinks, casting a surprised look towards his voice. That’s not a question he’d thought to ask himself, but it’s a good one.

“The fighters?” Hardcase asks. “Uh. Think they were still on our tail when the asteroids all went scattering like pool balls. Wouldn’t have blamed them if they pulled off then.”

There's a huff, low and quiet. “I don’t think they did,” Tup says, and Rex turns for him immediately, shoving through a handful of low-hanging branches as he picks up his pace.

“Tup?” he demands, and pushes out into a narrow clearing around a small lake. Tup is on the edge of the shore, and when Rex hurries over to join him, he rises from his crouch with a rock in his hand.

“Over there, Captain,” he says, and tosses the rock lightly out into the water. It’s too far for Rex to make out any sort of shapes, but—

There's a clang of stone on metal, another, another, and then the soft plop of the rock dropping into the lake.

“Something’s out there,” Rex says, stomach sinking. He glances around, trying to pick out any hint of a crash mark, but it’s too dark. There’s no way to tell without searching the forest all around the lake, and Rex doesn’t want to risk that in the dark. Not when they need to find Quinlan.

“One of the fighters, I think,” Tup says. “I kicked a rock by accident and heard it hit. And I smell scorched metal.”

Rex takes a breath, but he can't smell anything through the helmet filters. “Seven to start with,” he says grimly. “At least one crashed in the asteroid field. I think Hardcase got another. So that leaves four unaccounted for, if this is one.”

“I don’t have any flares or we could throw one out to make sure,” Tup says, frustrated. “But—what else could it be?”

Rex snorts. “With our luck, the other four are about to carpet bomb us,” he says, and Tup snorts. Reaching out, Rex claps him on the shoulder. “Keep going. We can come back and look around more once we find the general.”

“Yes sir,” Tup agrees, and Rex leaves him to it, pushing back through the trees. He can hear Hardcase whistling, and it makes him roll his eyes, but it’s a good marker.

“Hardcase, remember if you shot any fighters down?” he asks.

“Least one, Captain,” Hardcase confirms. “One of the ones I didn’t get?”

“Probably,” Rex confirms. “Crashed in a lake, so we won't know until it’s light.”

“Bet they clipped the same mountain we did,” Hardcase says, and Rex can hear the grin in his voice. “Mighty inconvenient, putting a mountain right there and not lighting it up at all.”

“We’re only just inside of the border of Wild Space,” Rex says dryly. “If there was someone on this planet, they’d have contacted the Republic by now. I’ve never heard of anyone out here, though.”

“Guess we get to play explorer, then,” Hardcase offers, cheerful. “Like in one of those adventure holos, yeah? Blitz always used to sneak the ones with all the busty ladies into the barracks on Kamino—”

“ _Hardcase_!” Tup protests, and his flush is practically audible.

Hardcase laughs, and Rex rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling a little too. Blitz did the same for his squad. Some holos the Kaminoans or the trainers just let them have, if they thought the holos would be a decent teaching experience, but Rex knows _precisely_ which holos Blitz slipped the trainees. Lots of beautiful people in intriguing positions, lots of inappropriate moments, and no redeeming educational value at all.

Rex was always partial to the exceedingly dramatic, romantic, and cheesy romances he smuggled in, personally.

“Come on,” he says instead of that, because only Cody knows about his soaps habit and he wants to keep it that way. “Let’s find the general. Eyes up in case any more of those fighters crashed nearby. I don’t want those scumbags to take us by surprise.”

“Yes, sir,” Tup says determinedly, and Hardcase echoes him. Rex follows the sound of their steps in the darkness, carefully scanning the forest as they move, and tries not to think too hard about the pilots of those fighters being somewhere nearby. doesn’t want to consider what will happen if they manage to find Quinlan first, unconscious and vulnerable and wrapped in Jedi robes.

They didn’t hesitate to torture him the first time around. Kenobi had gotten Quinlan's emergency transmission asking for extraction a solid week before the 501st was able to get to him, and Rex saw for himself what that week did to Quinlan. The flinching, and the fact that he didn’t want anyone to touch him but tolerated it when Rex was actively helping him, the bruises and the water in his lungs and—

He’s a Jedi, and he’s been putting himself in the most dangerous positions all through this war to help the Republic win. Rex won't let him fall back into the syndicate’s hands. He _can't_.

Not just because Quinlan's a Jedi. Not just because he has valuable information. Because he deserves to be rescued, to be saved and not have to face kriffing _torture_ just when the 501st managed to find him. And if Rex has to take out a few bastards lacking in morals to make sure of that, he’s more than happy to—

Though the trees, sudden and shocking against the darkness, a light flares.

“Captain!” Hardcase says loudly, even as Tup makes a sound of alarm.

“I see it!” Rex calls, and his pistols are in his hands, raised and ready even as he takes off at a run. It’s not a lightsaber igniting, isn't the dull, muted glow of their helmet lights, but something _brilliant_ , as incandescent as a magnesium flare. It cuts through the surrounding shadows like a knife, painfully bright, and Rex has no idea what could be causing it, but—

His foot hits empty air, and he falls.


	3. Chapter 3

This, apparently, is not a day when the universe wants anything to do with Rex.

For a long, long moment, Rex lies in a heap at the bottom of the cliff, trying to figure out what leverage he has when bargaining with higher powers and what he can offer them to give him a break. All the bruises from the crash are throbbing, and his head feels a little like a rung bell inside his helmet. There's a rock pressing up into his spine, a tree root tangled around one ankle, and a wash of self-pity that’s only getting worse the longer this day goes on.

“Frack,” Rex finally mutters, and pushes himself up, because as far as he knows the only collateral he has to get fate to stop laughing at him is a decent sense of humor and the ability to prank Wolffe and blame it on Cody. Which, while _hilarious_ , is probably not overly valuable in the grand scheme of things. It’s probably better to just keep going and hope fate’s bad at hitting a moving target.

He can't hear Hardcase or Tup, and he can't see far enough up the almost-sheer slope to tell how far he fell. It felt like a ways, but it’s hard to be certain. Climbing back up is going to be even harder, and Rex grimaces, wipes a bit of grime from his visor, and turns—

The light is still burning.

A dozen yards from him, suspended in midair, is that single point of light. It’s still glowing, though it’s less aggressive now, less bright. Fading, almost, as Rex watches, and he takes three steps towards it and then stops, casting a glance at the ground.

There's another sheer drop right in front of the light, a sharp delineation where the ground falls away and all Rex can see are treetops. Carefully, wary of any tricks, he raises his pistols and edges closer, feeling out each step before he takes it. The light _is_ dimming, and noticeably; by the time Rex reaches the edge of the cliff, it’s barely brighter than his helmet lights, and it’s sinking towards the ground.

Sinking towards the figure there.

“General!” Rex shouts, and throws himself forward, running down the cliff until the becomes too steep and then leaping clear, landing hard and rolling to spend momentum. He comes to his feet still moving, and throws himself at the still figure, the light, its fall. Raises a pistol, ready to fire even if he has no idea what good it will do—

The light winks out, and Rex hits the ground on one knee, frost creeping across his visor. With a curse, he wrenches it off, dropping it beside him, and reaches for Quinlan, only to stop short.

Quinlan isn't sprawled out, isn't a tangle of limbs like anyone would be after getting thrown from a ship. If Rex didn’t know better, he might even think he was sleeping, carefully arranged. He’s on his back, dreads spread out around him, the beads in them shining softly in the low light. His robes are neatly laid out over him, every fold perfect, and his hands are clasped around the hilt of his lightsaber, resting on his chest. The golden clan marking that’s inked across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose isn't even touched by dirt, and his face is clean. In contrast, the bruises look almost obscene, and something colder than the air around them slides through Rex's veins, makes him pull back before he can touch.

He pauses, wondering what’s throwing him off, not quite sure why this strikes him as eerie, but—

There's something. More than just the sudden drop in the temperature that’s making Rex's breath gust out in a cloud of white. More than the light, more than the way it led him here. It’s—

It’s a funeral, Rex realizes, and unease is a hand around his heart, fingers in his chest. Quinlan is laid out precisely like a Jedi about to be placed on a funeral pyre. Quinlan looks like he’s _dead_ , and someone is about to lay him to rest.

“General,” Rex says desperately, and shoves right through the spark of fear to grab Quinlan's shoulder and shake him. There's no sign of life, and Rex realizes with an unpleasant jolt that he can see his own breath in the air, but not Quinlan's. With a curse, he wrenches a gauntlet off, presses his fingers up under Quinlan's chin, flush against his throat. Feels for a pulse, and shifts, and _tries_ —

There's a flutter against his fingertips, just faintly. It makes Rex's breath jar out of his lungs on a gasp of relief, and he grabs Quinlan's arm, shakes him again. “General Vos. General! Master Vos— _Quinlan_ —”

In a whirl of white vapor, Quinlan exhales. His dark eyes slide open, slow, dazed, and Rex curls a hand around his bicep, tightens his grip. Doesn’t look at the funereal positioning, the way Quinlan's clasping his lightsaber that couldn’t be accidental.

Someone _did this_ to him. He didn’t fall out of the sky like this. Someone moved him, and someone arranged him, and Rex has no kriffing idea who the hell would have done such a thing, but there’s no denying that it happened.

They're not alone out here, and whether it was the fighter pilots who chased them playing a sick joke or something else, Rex can't say, but he doesn’t like it.

“Quinlan,” Rex repeats. “Come on, we need to get back to the others. Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

There's no answer for a long moment. Quinlan stares blankly into the darkness, only the white clouds of his breath and his half-open eyes showing he’s actually awake. Then, slowly, his eyes slide back to Rex, and he blinks.

“Captain,” he says, slurred.

Rex closes his eyes against the relief that kicks in his chest. “Sir,” he answers, and smiles. “Glad you're back.”

Quinlan huffs, tipping his head back. “Think I need to file a complaint with the pilot, too,” he manages.

Rex snorts despite himself, leaning over and carefully sliding an arm under Quinlan's back. “Hardcase is very sorry,” he says dryly. “He didn’t mean to leave our engine on the mountain while the rest of our ship was down here.”

“That’s what he _says_ ,” Quinlan mutters, and digs his fingers into Rex's armor as Rex eases him upright. For an instant his expression twists, almost pained, before it smooths out again, and he groans. “I feel like someone was playing gravball with my brain and forgot to tell me.”

“Getting ejected from a crashing ship will do that to you,” Rex says, a little dry, but—Quinlan didn’t mind before, in the cell, when Rex spoke freely. He wouldn’t with most generals, but Quinlan almost seemed to prefer it. “All your bones in one piece, sir?”

Quinlan waves a hand. “No _sir_ ,” he says, and his eyes close for a long moment that almost makes Rex want to hold his breath. “No _sir_ and I’ll…something. Give you something. Not tell Wolffe you dyed his underwear pink.”

Rex opens his mouth, pauses, closes it. Tries to imagine how on _earth_ Quinlan knows that when no one else in the whole damn _galaxy_ has realized that Rex was the culprit, and maybe squeaks a little when he says, “ _General_?”

“Quinlan,” he says firmly, and groans as he slumps forward a little, one hand going to his ribs. His other is locked tight around his lightsaber, and he looks down at himself, blinks, and asks, “Where’d you get the sash?”

Rex freezes. “I—sash?”

Quinlan looks at him for a moment, eyes narrowing, and then down at himself. “This isn't Obi-Wan’s sash,” he says, and jabs a finger at the wide cloth belt wound around his waist, holding his robes closed. He’s very careful not to touch it, though. “I sure as hell didn’t put it on while we were crashing, either.”

Rex swallows, and it feels like a spider crawling up his spine, all that unease trickling back. “I only just found you,” he says. “We crashed a ways back, and you weren’t on the ship. And—when I got here, you were…” He hesitates, trying to find a word to convey the perfect strangeness of the scene, Quinlan laid out with every fold of cloth neatly placed. “Arranged,” he finally settles on, and has to swallow. “Like for a pyre.”

There's a long moment of silence, and then Quinlan says, “Get it off me.”

“Sir?” Rex asks, startled, and at Quinlan's look he quickly corrects, “The sash?”

Quinlan jerks his head, and his face is set in an almost fearsome scowl. “If I touch it, I have no idea what will happen,” he says. “Get it off me, shove it away somewhere, and let’s get moving.”

Relief is a sharp thing, lodged behind Rex's breastbone. “Arms up,” he says, and leans in, fumbling to find the end of the wide white sash. It’s neatly embroidered with white thread just a few shades darker, a spreading wash of branching lines that don’t seem to have any sort of pattern to them. When Rex hooks his fingers under the end and pulls, it comes free in a flutter of pale cloth, slipping through his fingers like water and tumbling to the ground.

“Kriff,” Quinlan mutters, and shoves himself up. Quickly, Rex gets an arm around him and helps, pulling him up to his feet and steadying him there. When he looks, Quinlan seems pale, paler than normal, and there’s a tightness to his mouth that strikes Rex as a grim sort of fear.

“What is it?” he asks, concerned.

Quinlan glances at the sash, then at him. Pauses, like he’s weighing something, and then says, “Psychometry. I'm Kiffar. I have psychometry. If I hadn’t realized, and I’d just grabbed that thing—”

He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. Rex tightens his grip on Quinlan, pulling him a step away from the crumpled pile of white cloth, and forces himself to breathe. It was a trap. A nice, clever trap, wrapped around Quinlan's body and left for him. Left for him by _someone_ , probably whoever laid him out like a gift for the pyre.

“I think we found one of the fighters that followed us,” Rex says carefully. “Crashed in the forest. We couldn’t get to it, so it’s hard to tell, but…”

“That’s a hell of a kriffing joke to play,” Quinlan says after a moment. “I didn’t think those bastards had that kind of sense of humor.”

Rex just shrugs, not sure what to say. “We haven’t found any other trace of people down here,” he offers.

Quinlan grimaces, raking a hand through his long dreadlocks. “If one crashed, more probably did, too. Maybe one of them wanted to wrap me up nice and pretty to deliver me to the cartel leader.”

It’s a decent explanation, though something still prickles wrong and unsettled at the back of Rex's neck. But—the light he saw could have been a flare, some sort of signal to the rest of the pilots, and Rex just managed to scare them off when he took his graceful, sure-footed tumble down the cliff.

It makes sense. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

“They knew that you had psychometry?” he asks, a little concerned, because that’s—well. It’s a hell of a way to torture someone. Rex knows the outlines of it, as an ability; one of the admirals is a Kiffar, and Rex heard him mention it to General Skywalker.

But Quinlan shakes his head, and his mouth is tight. “I think some of them suspected, but I wouldn’t be much of a spy if I couldn’t hide things.” He flashes Rex a smirk that has very little humor in it, and says, “You know, there's an easy way to tell exactly who put that thing on me.”

Rex doesn’t have to be a genius to see exactly where this is going. “No,” he says, and if it comes out a little sharper than he intends—well. He’s not used to being able to say it to a general. “That’s a bad idea. Touching something bad can hurt you, right?”

Quinlan pauses for a moment, then breathes out through his nose and inclines his head, leaning on Rex just a little more heavily. “Incapacitate, if it’s really bad,” he says. “I don’t know how they’d get something that bad down here, but—”

“Better not to risk it,” Rex says firmly, and just to be safe, he pulls Quinlan another handful of steps away.

There's a quiet snort, and Quinlan casts him a sideways glance, dark eyes amused. “You like giving orders, don’t you, Captain?” he asks, pointed. “How’d you know I'm into that?”

Rex's brain stalls out, clicks over into pure blankness for a beat of seven seconds before the words really register, and then he flushes, red washing up his cheeks, off-guard and embarrassed and—

Well. Maybe a little hot under the collar of his blacks, too.

“ _General_ ,” he protests, and Quinlan laughs, hanging onto Rex carefully as Rex drags him another few steps back.

“Sorry,” he says, smirking. “Tell me to knock it off and I will, but you're cute when you go all red.”

Determinedly, Rex reaches down to grab his bucket, then jams it over his head. It feels a little more like hiding than it probably should. “You say that like you’d ever _follow_ orders,” he says, and he’s not picturing it, he’s _not_ , but—

“Well, someone making me follow them is the fun part,” Quinlan says lazily, and Rex spends a whole three seconds telling himself he’s not going to think about that _at all_ and then promptly fails miserably.

“That why you like Cody so much?” he asks, and hears a voice calling in the distance.

Quinlan's grin is a bright thing in the darkness. “Really? The commander likes that kind of thing? I’ll have to test that theory.”

It’s not a theory, but Rex isn't about to _tell_ Quinlan that. He’s also definitely not thinking about Cody and Quinlan in bed together, either. They have much more important things to consider right now. “Hardcase, Tup, over here!” he calls instead, pitched to carry. “Found the general!”

There's another call in response, distant enough that Rex can't quite pick out the words, but it’s coming from their left. A path around the cliff he fell down, probably, and he turns towards it, assessing Quinlan's steadiness as they move. He seems mostly able to move, if a little gingerly, but Rex keeps an arm around his waist even so, remembering Kix's worries about broken ribs and moving too much.

“Tup?” he calls up the hill, and gets another shout, just on the edge of indistinct, from somewhere close. It’s on the same level as them, so the others probably found a way down the cliff, and Rex is more than willing to walk a bit if it means he doesn’t have to scale a near-vertical stretch of rock, so he starts in that direction—

“Wait,” Quinlan says suddenly, sharply, and plants his feet, dragging Rex to a halt. When Rex gives him a startled look, though, Quinlan is looking elsewhere, out into the forest, and his eyes are narrowed. His breath is a cloud of white as he raises a hand, fingers spread, and exhales slowly.

The voice comes again, a little bit closer but still not recognizable words. It’s coming from deeper in the forest, Rex realizes, a jolt like ice in his stomach, and he takes a step back before he can help himself. It’s coming from in the forest, in not quite the opposite direction as Rex came, but—close enough to count.

Close enough that if he’d followed it without thinking, he’d just be putting more space between them and his men.

“Kriff,” Rex says, and Quinlan's low noise is all agreement, on the edge of anger.

“That’s not Tup,” he says grimly, and Rex draws one of his pistols, arm tightening around Quinlan's waist.

The shout comes again, higher this time, edging towards panicked. Rex twitches, dragging Quinlan back until they run right up against the cliff, and feels Quinlan flinch, grab him more tightly and pull him sideways, into a shallow hollow in the stone where the shadows will hide them. He freezes there, and Rex switches off his helmet lights and goes still as well, hardly daring to breathe as the cry rises again. It’s louder this time, closer, and an animal instinct to bolt curls through Rex's limbs, makes him want to run. It’s the instinct to help, to find whoever is making that noise and stop it, to fix it, to ease the suffering that’s making that voice high and panicked and pained, and he grits his teeth, closes his eyes.

“Shh,” Quinlan says, soothing more than warning, but it would be more effective if Rex couldn’t feel that his hand is white-knuckled around his lightsaber.

Rex doesn’t answer, can't. He presses more tightly to the rock as the voice fades away, trailing off on a long, wavering note that sounds like a plea. It echoes through the darkness, and Rex knows, _knows_ it’s not Tup or Hardcase, but at the same time he can't help but wonder whether it is, whether one of them got lost and fell in the dark and got hurt, or were shot by an enemy pilot, or—

On the cliff above them, barely two meters above their heads, there's a thud.

Rex's breath jars to a stop in his throat, knotted in his chest, and his fingers clamp down tight on Quinlan's hip. Against him, Quinlan is stiff and still, perfectly frozen as dirt and pebbles clatter down past them. The stones bounce off Rex's armor, clatter to the ground with a sound as loud as blaster fire in the still air, and he wants to curse, wants to rip free and run, but he doesn’t dare.

Another thud sounds, then a groaning creak. Branches and leaves shower down the cliff face, and there's a high-pitched moan, wood protesting force brought against it. Quinlan shifts, just a little, and Rex instantly drags him back, shoves him deeper into the hollow of the rock.

Closer than before, echoing through the woods, that cry comes again, just barely out of sight in the gloom. It still sounds too much like a Human voice, like distress, like it’s _searching_ , and Quinlan turns his head, the click of the beads in his hair too loud even over the groan and thump above them. Rex's heart is in his throat, and he grips Quinlan, feels Quinlan's shuddering breath—

With a crash, a tree tumbles over the edge of the cliff, uprooted. It just misses them, slamming into the earth with a bone-rattling thud and a splatter of sap, torn earth raining after it. A shout jars from Rex's throat, and Quinlan is already moving, hauling him sideways and out of the path of the debris, ducking around an outcropping of stone and shoving Rex into the curve of it as he plants himself in front of him. With a hiss, his lightsaber ignites in a wash of green light, casting deep shadows over his face, and he raises it, steps forward.

In the brilliance of his lightsaber, the dripping red sap splattered across his face looks precisely like blood.

As the last pieces of earth clatter down around the fallen tree, silence rises, a weight of its own. Nothing moves, and no sound comes, whether from above them or deeper in the woods. There's nothing at all, but Rex's heart is still beating too fast, too loud in his ears, and each breath feels like it’s almost a pant.

There's frost on his visor again, just a thin edging twisting out fernlike across the plastoid, and Quinlan's breath gusts white in the air.

“Bantha shit,” Quinlan says raggedly, too loud in the hush, and deactivates his lightsaber. Silently, Rex switches his helmet lights on again, then takes a step and catches Quinlan's elbow, holding him on his feet as he wavers.

In the light, the drops of red on his dark skin are even more obvious, and Rex itches to brush them away, make sure they're just sap and not actually blood.

“I don’t see anything that would have made it fall,” Quinlan says after a moment, and pulls away from Rex, carefully circling the tree. Rex stays right on his heels, pistol drawn, heart still just a little too quick, and tries to tell himself that sitting on the general is rude. “Looks like the roots just ripped free.”

“Guess we just had bad timing,” Rex says, and—like everything else, it makes sense. It’s a logical explanation.

There's an itch along the back of his neck, though, and ice down his spine, that says it’s not the right explanation at all, logic aside.

“Really bad timing,” Quinlan says grimly, and shakes his head, stepping back and almost into Rex. Rex braces a hand against his spine, supporting him silently, and watches his eyes flicker from the tree to the cliff to the forest beside them.

“An animal out there?” Rex suggests quietly, and—it wouldn’t be the first animal to mimic a voice with uncanny accuracy. But—

It didn’t sound like an animal. It sounded like a _man_. Like someone trying to get their attention, trying to draw them into the woods, and Rex doesn’t want to think about how effective it almost was.

“Maybe,” Quinlan say, and closes his eyes for a long moment. Straightens, careful, and very deliberately keeps his hold on his lightsaber. “We need to find Tup and Hardcase. I can feel them in that direction.”

Rex follows the direction of his finger as he points and doesn’t know whether to be relieved or unsettled that he’s gesturing in the opposite direction of the voice.

“They followed me, but I went over the edge of the cliff, following a flare that went off above you,” Rex says. “If we can find a spot that isn't quite so steep—”

Quinlan snorts. “No need,” he says, and tips his head at Rex. “Get over here and wrap your arms around my neck. I’ll get us up to the top.”

There might be heat in Rex's cheeks again. Now is _not_ the time, though, and he forces himself to move, do it, to not pay attention to the fact that Quinlan's shoulders are ropy with muscle and the neck of his robes shows an edge of sharp collarbone. Better to focus on whatever is behind them, anyway, and the fact that it’s not crying out any more. Which is…a hell of a lot less pleasant, admittedly.

At least when whatever it is was making noise, they could tell where it was.

There are no comments, though; Quinlan seems entirely focused, because he wraps an arm around Rex's waist, then takes a breath and jumps, and gravity loses its hold. They drift up slowly, and Rex can feel Quinlan straining like he’s lifting them physically, like he’s struggling, but after a long moment Rex feels his boots hit solid ground. Immediately, he braces, takes Quinlan's weight as Quinlan staggers, and drags his arm over Rex's shoulders to help support him.

“General?” he asks, concerned.

Quinlan waves a hand, though his face is still pale. “Stop with the general. Just tired,” he manages, and Rex thinks of him in that cell, then grimaces and pulls him in a little more firmly.

“We’ll get somewhere secure and rest for a bit,” he says firmly, and it’s probably a sign of just how tired Quinlan is that he doesn’t even attempt to argue.

“Hardcase and Tup first,” is all he says, and points towards the ridge Rex first fell down. “They're by the door there.”

About to take a step, Rex stops dead, turning to look at Quinlan. “Door,” he repeats, and there's alarm rising, sharp and metallic in the back of his throat. “Gen—Quinlan, what door?”

Quinlan's eyes slide open. Rex hadn’t even realized he had closed them. “The door into the mountain,” he says, like it should be obvious. Like Rex should know what he’s talking about. “The one we went through last time.”

“We didn’t go through a door,” Rex says, and has to swallow. There's something—heavy. The air is heavy. He can see Quinlan's breath, and feel that he’s shivering, just a little. “This is the first time we’ve come this way.”

“Is it?” Quinlan asks, frowning. “But the door is right there.”

Rex turns, following his gaze, and the lights from his helmet don’t reach nearly far enough into the dark to see anything but vague shadows in the gloom. But—

Even though there’s no illumination, even though it’s set back in the shadows against dark stone, the outline of a door in the side of the cliff is all too clear.


End file.
